Jumping spiders are fascinating creatures. Although they are rarely more than 1cm in body length, they seem quite intelligent and display a wide range of personality. They have excellent eyesight, since they must rely on their visual acuity for hunting and catching prey, rather than webs like most other spiders. This requires an unusual frontal eye placement which is distinctive of their species.

This particular type of spider served as inspiration for Masamune Shirow’s fuchikoma, uchikoma & tachikoma tanks, seen in Ghost in the Shell. In this video, two male jumping spiders (Tom & Huck) are out and about in sigma1920‘s garden, and it’s mating season. Be sure to watch with annotations (and check out sigma1920’s youtube channel for many more videos):

Looking at these little guys in action, it’s hard to believe that scientists will ever be able to match the beauty of their design in robot form. It’ll be quite an achievement if we can even capture 1/100th of what these are capable of.